Review: The Sins of the Father by Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block’s first Matthew Scudder novel, The Sins of the Father, is exactly what I want from a crime novel. It’s spare and lean, and propulsive. No gimmicks, stripped of anything even remotely superfluous. The mystery, which seems open and shut, is of course anything but, and quickly unravels into something more menacing. And as a series-starter, it prevails, brilliantly and unequivocally. It tells the reader: this is Matt Scudder; get used to the name. He’s stickin’ around awhile.

The Sins of the Father sees Scudder hired by a distraught father to investigate the recent stabbing murder of his estranged daughter. Not to solve it, because the apparent killer — his daughter’s gay male roommate — has already been arrested, and self-inflicted his own punishment, by hanging himself in his cell. No, the girl’s father merely wants to understand why anyone would want to kill his daughter, and what circumstances lead to her murder?

The Scudder novels always have two protagonists: the man himself, naturally, and New York City. The two are inseparable, like Batman and Gotham City, and Superman and Metropolis. And mid-1970’s New York is a hell of a place, rife with strange and dangerous characters and corner-street bars. Scudder’s NYC isn’t a place I’d necessarily want to visit, but I’m always more than happy to witness through his eyes. With token brusqueness and larconic wit, he delves into the lives of the murdered woman and her roomate, untangling sordid lives, where no one is innocent, even if they’re not necessarily guilty of the crime being investigated.

The Sins of the Father is brilliant. The plot hums along without a wasted sentence, and despite its confined length, Block still allows snippets of Scudder’s personality and foibles to shine through. It’s going to floor you with ingenuity; it’s not breaking any moulds, it doesn’t redefine the genre: it’s just a really, really well written crime novel. Which is par for the course, obviously; we’re talking about Lawrence Block, here.